Laughing Til Our Ribs Get Tough
by Olivia Beige
Summary: Lyanna Stark is a busy twenty-two year old: she has a degree to finish, a Year Two son to watch cartoons with, a best friend with whom she has friendship bracelets made, and a someone she has met on a train.


NOTE: Title from Lorde's _Ribs_.

* * *

The dark grey stones of Winterfell castle were visible from the cheery, lighted windows of the ice cream shop.

Lyanna popped a curl of coffee crumble in her mouth, absently gazing at the gas station just beyond the folding blackboard chalkily announcing Danny Flint's new pepper ice cream, the never-ending loop of headlights lending Winterfell a misty glow in Lyanna's vision.

She turned to look at Jon beside her. "D'you want to go home yet?"

Jon shook his head as he chomped on his chocolate-tipped cone.

"No," agreed Lyanna. She celebrated her son's wisdom by eating another spoonful of coffee crumble.

The both of them were tucked away in a corner, as far from the doors and the till as possible. On the two empty chairs beside their table were their bags: Jon's backpack and lunchbox, and Lyanna's backpack and storage tube.

Jon blissfully helped himself to a chocolate fudge brownie as soon as he finished his ice cream, and Lyanna let him have his sugary bliss. He was only six and it was his name day.

Lyanna, however, was two-and -twenty, and his mother. She glanced down at his schoolteacher's note with dismay and amusement. She was sure mothers weren't supposed to find it funny when their kids were caught cheating during an exam.

"Can you even cheat on a penmanship exam?" Lyanna had demanded to no one in particular earlier that afternoon. Because it was Friday, it was Lyanna who had come to collect Jon as soon as she had got out from her one Friday class. Jon had been quite bouncy, cheerily swinging their held hands as they walked to Lyanna's car, going on and on about balloons and ice cream and chocolate. "I mean, it's a _writing_ exam, for gods' sake."

"The question paper said to write your name," Jon had piped up. He'd seemed unperturbed about the whole thing. He probably didn't know what cheating meant. "I have two names. I forgot which one is my first name. So I looked at my I.D."

"They didn't make you lot take off your I.D.s?" Lyanna had put their bags in the backseat together with the signed poster of The Courtesans her hot little hands had found in the uni record shop, then belted Jon on the passenger seat.

"No, Mummy."

"You know it's bad to cheat, don't you, Jon?"

"Yes." Jon had nodded virtuously. "But I didn't look at Alys' paper! I just remembered my I.D. has my name on it. It's mine. So it's not cheating? Right, Mummy?"

Lyanna had cackled so hard that she started wheezing.

Still chortling, Lyanna had done her best to explain cheating on exams as she drove. Then they had excitedly talked about this cartoon they both adored, the Kingswood Brotherhood.

She tucked in the schoolteacher's note in her trousers' pocket and polished off her ice cream. Jon had chocolate smears on his cheeks now, his little legs swinging a few metres off the travertine tiles. Smiling at his tufty dark head, Lyanna tightened the string of his balloon around the handle of his Ulmer of the Kingswood Brotherhood lunchbox.

Two names, Lyanna thought to herself with a wry smile.

Lyanna would have been happy with only "Brandon." Even Brandon was delighted, crowing out that Jon was his most favourite nephew, and Lyanna remembered weakly laughing on the hospital bed as Brandon gently took her baby in his arms. She had been six-and-ten, revising for one of the most important exams in her life, and Brandon had been home from uni, in the middle of writing his undergraduate thesis and his clothes still rumpled when he'd rushed Lyanna to the hospital.

It had been Ned who suggested that she add the "Jon" after Lord Jon Arryn, the Prime Minister and Ned's mentor. Lord Arryn had agreed to be her son's godfather. Mother and Father had strongly agreed for Lord Arryn the Prime Minister to be her son's godfather.

No one spoke of Jon's father.

In her head, Lyanna thought of Jon's father as that one singer she had hooked up with. Who also turned out to be the Prince of Dragonstone with a degree in Classics and a devouring passion for the harp and acoustics.

Mother thought of Jon's father as the divorced prince who would never ever take custody of Jon.

Father thought of Jon's father as the son of the astoundingly _kooky_ king – unstable, quite demented, but no one said that out loud – and thus it was good that Lyanna added the name "Jon," after the Prime Minister.

Lord Robert Baratheon, Ned's best mate and Lyanna's ex-fiancé, thought of Jon's father as a fanciful hipster who had taken advantage of a minor.

"Trust me, I wanted to bang him like a flimsy screen door," Lyanna had told Robert, "and I was sober."

They had been riding around Riverrun, the day before Ned's wedding to Catelyn Tully, Brandon's ex-fiancée. It turned out that, once the air had been cleared of any engagement talk between Lyanna and Robert, the two of them could get along well especially in the all-around importance of hunting tips and fucking stories.

"He was the adult there!" Robert had thundered.

"Yes, well." Lyanna had acknowledged Robert's point. As she grew closer and closer to how old Rhaegar Targaryen had been, three-and-twenty, and seeing kids aged five -and -ten as being what they were – kids – Lyanna had been avoiding thinking about _it_. It brought a sour twist in her gut.

"Technically the adult," Robert had continued with a derisive snort, calming a bit as their horses followed the bend of the Red Fork. "Where is he now? Off somewhere to Asshai or Leng or wherever for some mouldy prophetic text."

Robert had met her son during the wedding reception, Jon swaddled and feeding from a bottle, and Robert had said, "What's his name?" And when he'd heard one of the names he had gruffly chuckled in his hippocras.

"Ah, after old Jon Arryn." He had mistily stared into the distance. Lyanna had glanced down to adjust Jon's swaddling clothes, soft grey cotton with tiny printed snowflakes, and when she'd looked up again Robert was still mistily staring into the distance.

Lyanna had followed his gaze and she saw Ned almost dropping a piece of wedding cake down his front and Catelyn – glowing seven-moon-pregnant Catelyn - rescuing it with her own fork, the tines of their forks tangling over cream and cake.

Lyanna had looked back at Robert. He had still been staring at Ned and Catelyn.

After a while, he had said to her, "How about it? We both have kids out of wedlock. Won't you change your mind? It's a match made in seven heavens."

Robert had been very tall and very handsome in his best man suit, but Lyanna had been struck with a certainty stronger than her conviction at four and ten, that she and Robert would be better off as friends.

Lyanna had laughed. Jon had only peacefully shifted his tiny pink head. "Don't push it, mate. I mean, look around you. Brandon broke the engagement only to find out Catelyn's halfway to being in love with Ned." She had jovially elbowed him as best as she could with Jon in her arms. "Things might work out."

The corner of Robert's lips had twitched crookedly and he had returned to his wine and staring at Ned and Catelyn. "I doubt that."

* * *

But it was that thought which kept Lyanna going: things might work out. Things would work out. Lyanna herself would make things work out.

It was that thought held close to her mind, a second touchstone to the Stark words, which helped Lyanna still see the funny and bright side of things.

She had finished secondary and then had been accepted to the Architecture Program in the University of the North. Jon was well cared for in Winterfell. The castle was enormous: Mother and Father lived in one wing, Ned and Catelyn and their kids in another, Lyanna and Jon in yet another, and Benjen still had his own rooms for his uni holidays. Even Brandon still had rooms there even though he was currently living in King's Landing.

"Why is there a need to move out?" Father had asked Lyanna, his nose wrinkling on his long stern face. "House Stark is not impoverished that we cannot house and feed our children."

"There is this recent vogue of buying houses, Rickard," Mother had said in brisk tones, "or renting flats. Really, Lyanna, Winterfell and the North have been our family's for eight millennia. You need not do something as vulgar as to buy or rent your shelter."

Lyanna had winced. "It's not that _vulgar_ , gods. Cat says her friend is looking to be a real estate dean type."

Mother had just finished signing a one-thousand dragon deposit into Jon's bank account. She had never been the motherly sort of mother, and throughout Lyanna's life Mother had shown fierce affection by patting Lyanna's shoulder or depositing to Lyanna's account from the Stark holdings or swearing to beggar the Targaryens of their money and render them royal paupers in the International Court if they ever started a mess with Jon. ("Do not be ridiculous, Lyanna, of course it is possible. They are an upstart dynasty, after all, and their government is in shambles before Jon Arryn stepped in. Besides we are bonded with the other lords paramount who count.")

"What friend?" Mother had frowned, clicking her silver-tipped pen.

"The Baelish lad, Lyarra," Father had told her. "The one who got into a brawl with Brandon."

With resigned amusement, Lyanna had watched stern Father's and brisk Mother's long Stark faces faintly crease with snobbery. Her parents had shared a brief look, then they turned to survey her at the same time, Father sitting back on his sofa cushion beside Mother and Mother picking up her cup.

"Well what did you expect, Lyanna?" Mother had said. "You are just proving my point. House Baelish practically makes House Targaryen look as old and prestigious as House Stark."

Lyanna was used to this kind of thinking. It was difficult not to be especially if one's parents were first cousins from the same House, and most especially if one was friends with Cersei Lannister.

To this day Lyanna was still not quite sure why people cast her strange looks whenever they learned of this friendship. Even dear Ned had slowly put down his cereal spoon when Lyanna told her brothers, "Cersei and I had friendship bracelets made. Look." And then she had promptly brandished the rose gold bracelet made by Cersei's father's jeweller.

"Of course the bracelets have to be in the shape of the swords," Cersei had told the jeweller. She was terribly glamorous and terribly bossy.

Lyanna had visited King's Landing to survey the Red Keep's architecture for a course project, and had met Cersei in a bookshop in The University of Crownlands when the both of them reached for the last autographed copy of Syrio Forel's book at the same time and nearly tore the book in half.

"With roses," Lyanna had added with a beam for the jeweller.

"With roses," Cersei had agreed, as if indulging Lyanna.

Lyanna liked Cersei's taste in literature and her irreverence and ambition. Cersei seemed to like how Lyanna still pursued her education even after birthing Jon. Cersei also seemed to like Lyanna's jokes because she always giggled and snorted in that unpolished way, and at one point confided, "You make me not want to smash things with your jokes. I like that you're funny."

Cersei might wrinkle her nose a lot for no conceivable reason. She might look at you as if she wished you were not utterly annoying to her, or she might smile her very beautiful smile and you would never know if she was delighted or if she was fantasizing of scooping out your eyes with a spoon. But Lyanna had discovered her tell.

"And then I wondered about the poetry of pillars," Lyanna was telling her one time, as they strolled around a garden during Catelyn's sister's engagement to Cersei's twin brother. "All those arches, you know, those curves and twists. Modern castles should also have cantilevers."

The next day they were in a bookshop where Cersei had a pile to purchase, but when they stepped through the doors she turned to Lyanna and said, "They have top of the line tracing paper here. As well as storage tubes. Newly come from Tyrosh. My father knows a brilliant pen maker. I will show you."

Lyanna smiled at this thoughtfulness. Cersei was rarely thoughtful to others. Lyanna drifted after Cersei's tall glamorous form clad in a red silk pantsuit, watching her buy a pile of books on accounting and law for her undergraduate thesis.

"Are these not in your uni library?" Lyanna asked her.

Cersei looked appalled. "Yes, they are. But I would not touch those copies."

"So you wouldn't touch – books touched by others," Lyanna said slowly.

"Of course not." Cersei stared at her, as if Lyanna were mad. "Why would you think that?"

Lyanna slowly nodded, marvelling at this.

And then, somehow, they were friends. They had friendship bracelets made. They weren't quite sure which of them had insisted on having the bracelets, though.

There were other marvellous things about Cersei, too.

"I," she told Lyanna with a grand sweep of her hair, "will pursue law in university. After which I will be a fearsome banker and expand the Casterly Bank beyond Westeros. Money and justice, Lyanna. If I have them in both fists, I'd practically run the world."

To this Lyanna nodded, quite inspired. This friendship made the both of them even more relentless in their goals.

"Dental dam, you twit," Cersei sleepily growled another time, when Lyanna had rung her in a panic about hooking up with a woman for the first time. After a beat she added, "Keep her clit between your lips when she comes. Ring me tomorrow. At a decent hour."

To this Lyanna nodded, wondering what life would be without the tender flower of Cersei's friendship.

* * *

In the car on the way back from the ice cream shop, Lyanna yelled into her speaker, "Are you serious?"

"Are you shouting?" came Cersei's bland voice. "If yes then I am serious."

"Oh gods!" Lyanna yelled back. "Oh my gods."

"I know," Cersei said. "I am feeling rather pious today. I wonder if I can buy sept candles in bulk."

Lyanna cackled. "Gods, I'd tell you to shut up. But this is amazing news. Stupendous news. Stumazing news!"

"You are raving. I will hang up on you."

"Mummy," said Jon, "what is raving?"

"Oh," said Cersei. Lyanna could imagine her silently clearing her throat. "Hello. Jon."

Jon looked quizzical. "Mummy, the circle net is talking to me."

"That's Mummy's friend, Lady Cersei Lannister. She'd like for you to call her Lady Cersei."

"I'd like to go back to my revising now," Cersei said. "I cannot say for now if I will be able to meet you then, Lyanna, but I will update you."

"Nah, that's all right, whichever. Thanks for telling me, though."

Lyanna and Jon both got home humming the Kingswood Brotherhood theme song, Jon no doubt buzzing with sugar and extremely pleased with his balloon, and Lyanna buzzing with Cersei's news.

"Fantastic news!" Lyanna announced, sweeping into Father's solar. "Guess who will be going to Oldtown next moon's turn?"

Father and Mother looked up from the table. They were eating boiled wolfberries with cheese. Mother sent a brief smile Jon's way. Lyanna had always thought that Jon reminded Mother of sweet quiet Ned, who was Mother's favourite child.

"What for?" Father asked. "Do you not have classes, Lyanna?"

"Xanda Qo's coming to the Citadel on First Spring festival. To give a talk." Lyanna drew back chairs for both her and Jon. "You know, _the_ Xanda Qo. My living architect legend. So it's okay, it's a uni holiday."

"Wolfberries?" offered Mother, tapping at the rim of the crystal fruit bowl with her fork.

"No, thank you, Mother. We had ice cream and brownies."

Lyanna felt Jon tugging on her jumper sleeve. "Mummy. Mummy can I go, too?"

"Sure, little love." Lyanna smiled at him, then reached out to rub away a chocolate smear from his chin. "We'll have adventures."

Jon smiled back at her, quick and bright, before leaning against Lyanna's elbow.

Lyanna felt that quiet, enveloping intensity again, as she looked down at her son leaning against her, his weight warm and trusting. She took his small chubby hand with the balloon string and she whispered in her mind that she would make things work out.

When Jon was born, Brandon was the first one in her hospital room, being the one who had rushed her there in the middle of the morning. But before the day was over, her family had packed by her bedside, the lot of them uncharacteristically flustered. They'd seen Lyanna then, amongst the pillows with her sweaty hair brushed, and the first thing she did was burst out crying that she imagined she out-cried her infant son.

She'd felt nothing for the small pink raging bundle Brandon had lain on her bosom. She'd felt nothing but an overwhelming uncertainty, and terror, and she'd wondered if something was wrong with her. She'd wondered how to love someone she didn't know: a tiny baby, with its alarmingly tiny head. Lyanna had been terrified that she might hold him the wrong way and break his neck, his tiny baby head plopping off like overripe wolfberry.

But before she had felt utterly alone in that spotlessly white hospital room, her family had come.

Brandon alternately singing to the baby and telling their parents, "The baby cried and cried. Strong lungs."

Father, blinking furiously and suspiciously misty-eyed, his warm hand seeking out Lyanna's: "Of course. Just like Lyanna when she was born. Any child of Lyanna's is bound to be shouting their presence to the world. No need to cry, my little Lyanna."

Mother, having come straight from a board meeting in White Harbor with Father, and bustling around the room with newly-ordered swaddling clothes before approaching Lyanna to pat her on the shoulder. "I have spoken to the doctor, Lyanna. She told me you and the baby are healthy. The dietician has also given me a list of foods for you. It has a lot of your favourites in it. Wolfberries. Does that sound lovely, Lyanna?"

Ned, quiet by Lyanna's pillow and holding her other hand, saying, "Lya, would you like some roses in your room at home? You can tell me what kind of bunch you'd like. I will pick the flowers myself. Don't cry, Lya."

Benjen, coming over closer to Lyanna after cooing over the baby: "Lya, I think the baby has your eyes. And hair. He'll be like a little Lyanna."

Until this day Lyanna was never sure if she was doing this whole mother business right. She'd melted a plastic tub when she only wanted to heat the baby porridge. She only collected Jon from school once a week. She was not sure if she was properly affectionate with him like she had seen other mothers with their kids.

The one thing she always told Jon was, "Just keep doing your best. Keep trying. Even if it's very difficult. All right? If you still got a low score at least you won't sigh and think, oh, I should have tried my best: I could have tried my best." Lyanna wasn't sure if that was enough.

But then one Saturday evening, she and Jon were in their solar and doing their homework, Jon identifying colour names in his workbook and Lyanna sketching an airport plan, when Jon had piped up, "Mummy, can you please sharpen my pencil?"

And with a gradual realisation as she turned and turned the sharpener, Lyanna had felt that quiet, enveloping intensity.

And when Jon had got into a fight shortly before his sixth birthday, apparently leaping into a classmate and punching him and shouting, "Don't you say that about my Mummy," Lyanna had sat from across the appalled teacher's desk and smugly thought, "Damn right, that's my son. Damn fucking right."

"So you would not be around for our First Spring picnic," Mother observed now. She turned to Father. "Rickard. Do you think Lord Hightower would agree to provide rooms for Lyanna and Jon?"

"I do not see why not. Let me contact him tomorrow." Father ate another wolfberry, regarding Jon as he chewed thoughtfully. "How was your day, Jon? How did you find your exam? Is it not your final day of exams?"

Lyanna and Jon glanced at each other. Jon's balloon bobbed.

"About his exam," began Lyanna.

* * *

When he learned about the exam situation, Brandon roared with laughter that his warmed ale splashed over from his cup and onto his hand. But the next day he was more solemn when he talked with Jon, reminded him to never look at anything other than his question paper and answer sheet during exams and that cheating is bad, and only gave Jon two candied Fossoway apples.

Jon promised to remember and sadly trailed away.

Later they discovered him and Robb tucked in a linen cupboard, hands and faces sticky with candied apples. Robb earnestly said, "I always share with Jon. Mummy and Daddy didn't tell me not to share the apples."

Last year's First Spring day, during the family picnic Jon had asked Lyanna, "Why does Robb have a Daddy and I don't?"

Lyanna, her brothers, her parents, and Catelyn had all paused, forks mid-air. A few metres away, Robb and Sansa's giggles as they played a monster and a lady had provided a rather ominous backing track.

"He's away, Jon," was all Lyanna had said. "He's far away."

"Is he coming back?"

Lyanna had cleared her throat. "Probably not."

And Brandon had cut in with, "Anyway, Jon, you have Uncle Brandon, right?"

This had cheered up Jon enough that he immediately scampered to where Brandon had been sitting and begged him for stories from the southron court. Brandon had promised that he had big picture books in one of his cases for Jon.

"We'll see the Honeywine, right, Mummy?" Jon said in a piercing whisper as they settled on the aeroplane. "Just like in my picture books. And the Citadel. And the Hightower."

They were in matching Kingswood Brotherhood cashmere jumpers. Jon had Ulmer on his and on Lyanna's was Wenda the White Fawn. Lyanna beamed at him and said yes, and then she helped him with his seatbelt. She'd chattered with him about his favourite knighthood stories from the southron courts until the aeroplane taxied down the ramp, until the aeroplane started to take off.

And then Jon got sick.

Finally when he feebly collapsed on his seat, his forehead a bit damp and his lips pale, Lyanna helplessly gestured with the bag. She'd never been great at the messy side of children. She rather hated it. But the distaste was overcome by worry that Jon was not feeling well.

The flight attendant swooped in and saved them both with another bag, a cup of water, and a motion-sickness pill.

"I don't like it here," Jon murmured.

An hour later their trays were pulled down and a sandwich was placed in front of him. Jon spent the rest of the flight staring yearningly at it and looking a bit sick.

"I've got your sandwich with me," Lyanna assured him as they went through numerous counters in the airport in the Reach. She had Jon on her hip as she pulled on her be-wheeled suitcase with her other hand.

"I hate flying," said Jon, his head on her shoulder.

"I know, little love. On our way back we'll –" A man bumped into Lyanna and almost sent her and Jon reeling across the marble tiles. "Watch it!" shouted Lyanna. She glared after the wanker who didn't even glance back their way. "Fucking ninny head – oh f – oh no. That's a bad word, Jon."

Jon only gripped on her shoulder and said, with sleepy conviction, "No flying."

"I need a nap," Lyanna texted Cersei in the taxi. "Wish you could've come. We could've got sozzled."

When their taxi entered the gates of Oldtown and Jon was dozing against Lyanna, Cersei replied with, "You and me both. I could use some alcohol or I would do something definitely not legal to these blithering imbecilic group mates."

Which was swiftly followed with, "Take a nap. Both of you. I'll ring you tomorrow after breakfast."

Lyanna and Jon did take a nap, and when they emerged bleary-eyed from their rooms in the Hightower Lyanna found that they weren't the only guests that Lord Leyton Hightower were entertaining.

Lyanna resisted the urge to fidget with her grey jumpsuit. She peered at the room full of mingling people in the softly-lighted antechamber before crouching in front of Jon.

"Right," she said. "You look very well. You'll play and make friends with the other kids whilst I talk with the adults, all right?"

"Okay," said Jon. Lyanna could see that he was quite nervous.

"It'll be okay," Lyanna assured him. "You can talk with them about the Kingswood Brotherhood or your picture books."

She left him with a small group of noble children being herded by the Hightower nurse in another adjoining antechamber. Jon kept glancing back at Lyanna over his shoulder until the doors were partly shut, and Lyanna beamed at him and ignored how she probably felt as nervous as he was.

There was a fetching pillar a few metres from her.

Lyanna was about to dash behind it to get her bearings first when Lord Hightower advanced on her with a wide smile. "Lady Lyanna. I trust you are well? Let me introduce you to the other guests."

And then – it was easy enough. Lyanna wondered what had got into her. Meeting people had always interested her.

Lady Ashara who was astoundingly beautiful, and a painter, and who would also be attending the Xanda Qo talk tomorrow. Lord Tyrell who went on and on about custom-made chairs. Lady Tyrell who was very knowledgeable about children's clothes and tailors. The Queen of Thorns who got into a debate with Lady Lannister over the price of oysters.

"Let them talk," said a voice in her mind which suspiciously sounded like Mother which then flowed into a Father-like voice, saying, "You are a Stark of Winterfell."

But no one in the chamber was malicious towards Lyanna, and if they were in the privacy of their heads or with their families, then why should Lyanna care? She had better things to care about, better things to expend her energies on than strangers' talk: she had Jon to care for, she had a name as an architect to make for herself.

"You're all right," was what Lyanna said in her mind. "You're all right."

 _tbc_


End file.
